From inspirational hero to despised killer – the life story of Oscar Pistorius, who used his anger to overcome every challenge before him… but ultimately allowed it to destroy him
- Pistorius shot Steenkamp with ‘black talon’ bullets on Valentine’s Day 2013
- A gun dealer said Pistorius was an enthusiastic lover of weapons
- His friends said fame got to his head, and he quickly became a different person
Oscar Pistorius wept over his girlfriend’s body moments after he shot her through a bathroom door in his plush Pretoria mansion in the early hours of Valentine’s Day.
Model Reeva Steenkamp was just 27 when her boyfriend, known the world over as The Blade Runner, shot her three times with ‘black talon’ rounds, designed to cause irreparable damage to unfortunate victims, in 2013.
Pistorius, a known gun enthusiast with an apparent paranoid streak, was given more than 13 years in prison, but was today granted his freedom after a parole board in South Africa said he had served enough time for killing Reeva Steenkamp.
The Blade Runner, 37, was convicted of her murder in 2016, a crime that he has steadfastly denied.
In the early hours of the morning, Pistorius fired four bullets through the locked door of a bathroom in his plush Pretoria home, three of which hit Steenkamp and caused mortal wounds.
While he claimed he shot through the door because he thought his girlfriend was an intruder, prosecutors went after him for murder, a charge he was eventually found guilty for after initially being convicted of culpable homicide in 2014.
He was given 13 years and five months in prison by South Africa’s Court of Appeal in 2017, more than double his original sentence of six years.
But before he was a convicted murderer, Pistorius was idolised and lauded across the world for his pure athletic talent, after he competed in the London 2012 Olympic Games, despite being a Paralympian.
Oscar Pistorius (pictured), a known gun enthusiast with an apparent paranoid streak, was given more than 13 years in prison
Born in 1986 without fibula bones in either of his legs, his parents had to ask doctors to amputate his legs below his knee when he was 11 months old
Model Reeva Steenkamp was just 27 when her boyfriend, known the world over as The Blade Runner, shot her three times with ‘black talon’ rounds
The Blade Runner never saw his disability as a hindrance to his life, and spent much of his early life playing a range of sports
Born in 1986 without fibula bones in either of his legs, his parents had to ask doctors to amputate his legs below his knee when he was 11 months old.
But in just six months, he managed to learn how to walk on fibreglass pegs.
The Blade Runner never saw his disability as a hindrance to his life, and spent much of his early life playing a range of sports, including water polo, tennis, Olympic wrestling and rugby.
One of his trainers from his childhood, Jannie Brooke, told the BBC shortly after he was convicted in 2015, that it took him six months to realise that Pistorius had no legs.
‘He was just one of the bunch, doing everything at the same pace as everybody else.’
It was a rugby injury in 2003 that led to him taking up sprinting, using the track to rehabilitate.
He was also invited to try a set of bleeding-edge prosthetics, that were said to be lighter, faster and stronger than anything made before.
Armed with his new running blades, he ran his first 100m race, winning in a time faster than any double amputee had ever achieved before.
Oscar Pistorius, the disgraced former Olympian who murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013, was told today that his bid for an early release from prison had failed
The double-amputee athlete, who broke barriers by competing on carbon-fibre running blades at the 2012 London Olympics, shot Reeva multiple times through a closed toilet cubicle door in his home in the South African capital, Pretoria, in the predawn hours of Valentine’s Day 2013. Pictured: After winning gold in the men’s 400m at the 2012 Paralympics
In 2017, the disgraced Paralympian was given 13 years in prison
READ MORE: Reeva Steenkamp’s mother ‘feels everything must be done to stop Oscar Pistorius’s habit of violence’ but is ‘satisfied’ with his release terms as he is granted parole but told to undergo anger therapy
Eight months later, at the Paralympics in Athens in September 2004, he won his first ever gold medal after thrashing the competition in the 200m race.
The next Paralympics, held in Beijing in 2008, he went to even higher heights, winning three gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 400m sprints.
He had also spent several years competing against non-disabled athletes, first in a Golden Gala 400m race in Rome in 2007, finishing second, and then in Sheffield where, in very wet conditions, he finished last.
But with his success came scrutiny, and critics accused the Blade Runner’s blades of giving him an unfair advantage.
The world governing body for athletics, the IAAF, agreed with his detractors, concluding that the blades gave him an unnatural advantage, concluding in 2008: ‘Running with prosthetic blades leads to less vertical motion combined with less mechanical work for lifting the body.
‘As well as this, the energy loss in the blade is significantly lower than in the human ankle joints in sprinting at maximum speed.
‘An athlete using this prosthetic blade has a demonstrable mechanical advantage (more than 30%) when compared to someone not using the blade.’
The heights Pistorius reached in his eight-year sprinting career were staggering, and were celebrated across the world
Known as the ‘Blade Runner,’ he was at the height of his fame when he killed Reeva months after the London Olympics
Tragically, Reeva had planned to give a talk about gender-based violence at a Johannesburg school on the day she was killed by Oscar. Pictured together in Johannesburg in 2013
His claim that he shot Reeva (pictured) in the belief that an intruder had entered his home while he slept, was ultimately dismissed by Pretoria judges after he had been cleared of murder and found guilty of culpable homicide
But the decision was overruled by a superior sporting court, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, once again making him eligible for the Olympics.
Four years later, at the London Olympic Games in 2012, he became the first track-and-field athlete in history to compete at both the Olympic and Paralympic games.
He made it to the semi-finals of the 400m race, and was also part of South Africa’s 4x400m relay team, which reached the finals but failed to take home a set of medals.
The heights Pistorius reached in his eight-year sprinting career were staggering, and were celebrated across the world, appearing on front pages as the gold standard of how disabled people can achieve just as much as non-disabled people.
He spent years rejecting the notion that the Paralympics played second fiddle to the Olympics, once being quoted saying: ‘I am not a Paralympic athlete, nor an Olympic athlete. I am simply an athlete and sprinter.’
But close friends revealed in the years after he was sent to prison that global fame changed him for the worse.
Pistorius furiously stormed out of a 2011 interview after a journalist asked him about his uphill battle to take part in non-disabled athletics
Oscar Pistorius (pictured in the High Court in Pretoria, South Africa in 2014) has repeatedly refused to admit he callously killed Reeva Steenkamp during an angry and violent outburst and has stuck to his claim that it was an accident
Pistorius furiously stormed out of a 2011 interview after a journalist asked him about his uphill battle to take part in non-disabled athletics.
READ MORE: Oscar Pistorius’s life behind bars – As the Blade Runner is freed, how he became a prison spiritual leader, was beaten up by inmates and ‘wailed like a child’ during meeting with Reeva Steenkamp’s father
He also publicly lashed out at fellow Paralympian Alan Oliveira after he took gold at the 2012 Olympics, claiming the Brazilian athlete was running on exceptionally long blades.
‘Not taking away from Alan’s performance, he’s a great athlete, but these guys are a lot taller and you can’t compete [with the] stride length,’ he said.
‘You saw how far he came back. We aren’t racing a fair race. I gave it my best.’
Another South African Paralympian, Arnu Fourie, told a journalist in 2012 that had to move rooms in the athletes’ village in Stratford, London, because he could hear Pistorius constantly screaming down his phone.
Paralympic commentator Tony Garrett said in 2015: ‘His lifestyle and image changed and clearly something got to him and he wasn’t the same person, there were so many demands on his time.
‘I think he let rip every so often and he wouldn’t have done that a few years ago.’
Sports journalist Graeme Joffe, who co-owned a racehorse with Pistorius and three others, said: ‘He was showing a spoilt-brat attitude that came out a year later at the Paralympics [in 2012] when he embarrassed the country.’
Pistorius met Barry Steenkamp (left) last year. But Ms Steenkamp’s father came away from the meeting dissatisfied and ’emotional’. He did not travel to Pretoria today due to poor health
Back in South Africa, there were several incidents of him recklessly firing guns, one in a restaurant and another time when he shot a bullet through a car roof after he was pulled over by a police officer for speeding
South Africa allows convicts to be considered for release when they have served half of their sentence and the parole officers were told there had been a blunder in calculating the actual time the killer had served. Pictured: Reeva Steenkamp
His failure to come clean despite his murder conviction led Reeva’s grief-stricken mother (pictured) to brand him ‘a liar who I hate so much’
‘He was a different man to the one I had interviewed so many times, in the sense that he was a bit stand-offish and a little bit cold, not his usual warm self.’
READ MORE: Reeva Steenkamp’s mother tells Oscar Pistorius parole hearing the Blade Runner robbed her of her ‘dearest child and my heartbroken husband’
Back in South Africa, there were several incidents of him recklessly firing guns, one in a restaurant and another time when he shot a bullet through a car roof after he was pulled over by a police officer for speeding.
During his trial, a local gun dealer testified that the athlete had a ‘great love and enthusiasm for guns.’
Sean Rens, manager of the International Firearm Training Academy, revealed an incident months before the fatal shooting where Pistorius drew his gun and went into ‘combat mode’ after hearing a laundry machine go off in his home.
Rens told the court that Pistorius confided that he started sweeping the rooms of his home to make sure there wasn’t an intruder.
But South Africa’s media, lauding him for his athletic prowess, paid little attention to his darker side, and instead focused on his blossoming relationship with Reeva Steenkamp.
The pair were introduced by a mutual friend, and were spotted at an awards ceremony in November 2012.
Reeva, a model, was already a huge star in South Africa, regularly appearing on the front pages on magazines.
At a dinner hosted by a friend of the couple just two weeks before she died, Reeva reportedly seemed happy with the three-month relationship.
But texts revealed in court during Pistorius’ trial paint a murkier picture of the relationship.
The court heard testimony that while 90% of the messages they sent each other were ‘loving’ and ‘normal’, Reeva accused Pistorius of being jealous and possessive.
In a lengthy text, sent less than three weeks before she was shot through a bathroom door, she told him: ‘I’m scared of you sometimes, of how you snap at me.
‘You have picked on me incessantly since you got back from [Cape Town] and I understand that you are sick but it’s nasty.
Rob Matthews (pictured, centre), whose daughter Leigh was kidnapped and murdered in 2004 and is an anti-gender violence campaigner, is helping to represent June Steenkamp, Reeva’s mother
When asked if he believed Pistorius had served enough time behind bars, he said: It’s such a difficult question. We want to live in a country where there are rules and regulations that are evenly applied across the board without fear or favour’
June Steenkamp (pictured in 2014) blasted Oscar Pistorius at his parole hearing saying he robbed her of her child and husband, as she believed Reeva’s father died from a broken heart
‘You do everything to throw tantrums in front of people.’
READ MORE: Reeva Steenkamp’s heartbroken parents say Oscar Pistorius should NEVER be released after they confronted him in prison where he ‘wailed like a child’ – but continued to deny killing their daughter
But the night before Valentine’s Day 2013, her final night alive, she handed him a card in which she wrote: ‘I think today is a good day to tell you that I love you.’
Only one person alive knows exactly what happened on the night of the shooting.
Pistorius claims he shot four bullets through the door of his bathroom in his Pretoria mansion because he thought his home was being invaded.
But South African prosecutors painted Pistorius out to be a vindictive boyfriend who shot her in a fit of rage following a bitter argument.
An autopsy of Reeva’s body revealed she was shot was ‘black talon’ bullets, designed to shred upon impact to cause ‘maximum damage.’
Dr Johan Stipp, a neighbour who went to investigate the sound of gunshots and screaming that woke him up, said he found the athlete hunched over his body.
‘I opened her right eyelid: the pupil was fixed dilated and the cornea was milky – in other words, it was already drying out. So to me it was obvious she was mortally wounded.
Pistorius claims he shot four bullets through the door of his bathroom in his Pretoria mansion because he thought his home was being invaded
Pistorius had his sentence doubled, and was given over 13 years in prison for the murder of Reeva Steenkamp
Much is up in the air for what the 37-year-old will do in the coming weeks, let alone the rest of his life
‘I looked at the rest of her body and I noted that she had a wound in her right thigh, also a wound in her right upper arm.
‘As I looked further, I saw that there was blood and hair and what looked like brain tissue intermingled with that to the right area of her skull.’
READ MORE: Parents of model shot dead by Oscar Pistorius rejected £21,000 lump sum from athlete and have vowed to repay monthly deposits he has given them since her death, court told
While I was trying to ascertain if she’s revivable, Oscar was crying all the time. He prayed to God to please let her live, she must not die.
‘He said at one stage while he was praying that he will dedicate his life and her life to God if she would just only live and not die that night.’
‘He was making promises to God, he was trying to, I don’t know, maybe get atonement, but he was very distraught, severely so … He definitely wanted her to live.’
The trial was contentious, with the judge dismissing much of the prosecution’s evidence as circumstantial, while also calling Pistorius a ‘very poor witness.’
She dropped the charge from murder to culpable homicide, for which a sentencing judge later gave Pistorius five years in prison.
He was release on parole after serving just one-sixth of his sentence, a decision that angered many in South Africa.
The justice minister at the time, Michael Masutha, sent the case to the parole review board two days before Pistorius was due to leave, claiming that the parole board should not have begun deliberations until after the Blade Runner has completed the minimum time for his sentence.
Just a year after his parole was reviewed, South Africa’s Supreme Court overturned the culpable homicide verdict, and found the athlete guilty of murder.
Judges concluded that it did not matter who was behind the door; he should’ve known that shooting four rounds at them would end their life.
Pistorius had his sentence doubled, and was given over 13 years in prison for the murder of Reeva Steenkamp.
After unsuccessfully applying for parole earlier this year, he will soon be a free man.
But the parole board has told him that he has to undergo therapy for gender-based violence.
Much is up in the air for what the 37-year-old will do in the coming weeks, let alone the rest of his life.
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